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Are Your Friends Making You Fat?
writes, "Sharing drinks and treats with friends is important, but what is even more important are the ideas we share with each other. "
I have found myself over the summer celebrating with friends just a little too much. A glass of wine, a beer during the work week, the extra slice of birthday cake all equal a few unwanted pounds around the mid-section.

So I've begun to try and take off the few pounds I gained over the summer. However, it is hard to resist the treats that friends bring to our girls get together ever week.

"They smell wonderful." It's not just the one drink or treat I have, because it generally leads to two!

Many of us face temptations. But researchers think there's more to the spread of weight gain than simply copying a friend's food choices.

A study done in 2007 suggests that your best friend's weight may be very influential in determining whether you'll gain or lose weight over the years. The research documents the spread of obesity from person to person in a study of more than 12,000 people.

Sharing drinks and treats with friends is important, but what is even more important are the ideas we share with each other.

According to James Fowler, Ph.D., who studies social networks at the University of California, claims that our ideas about what's a normal amount of food or exercise, and what counts as a normal body size, all seem to be influenced by the people to whom we're connected. Fowler believes that these "norms" ultimately shape our weight. Weight gain and weight loss was found as the strongest patterns among friends. The Chance of becoming obese increased by 57 percent if that person's close friend became obese. If it was a sibling or a spouse, the person's risk went up by more than one-third. The same goes for weight loss.

Experts say this study shouldn't be used to blame fat people for making other people fat. But since there's a domino effect to weight gain and weight loss, researcher James Fowler says people can use this to their advantage.

What I took away from this research was that you really need to get your friends and family involved in the process.

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa066082

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